Friday, April 16, 2010

A bit of a departure from the norm here. This was done as a contribution to the excellent Book of Genocide blog: wherein artists interpret and illustrate allocated passages from the Bible.

I got this, from the lamentaitons of Jeremiah;

The LORD hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the LORD hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.

I did a little research on Jeremiah and on the various interpretations of this passage.

Jeremiah is usually depicted as an old bearded man , hunched in a dungeon with a haunted, worried expression and this is what I had in mind when initially started sketching.

Then I read a little more

A few interpretations suggest the 'virgin daughter of Judah' is a either a city or the Jewish people- there is also an interesting story of Judah mistakenly having sex* and bearing twins with his daughter in law- whose bloodline eventually spawned a certain Jesus of Nazareth

Scandalous!

*well she was dressed as a harlot at the time, she was punished by burning, he got off scot free.

Anyway, here is the "daughter" being crushed as in a wine press by the lord